“The global energy debate keeps recycling the illusion that natural resource abundance automatically translates into national wealth,” said Samirul Ariff Othman, adjunct lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) and a senior consultant with Global Asia Consulting.

“History shows a far more sobering reality. Resources are not wealth in themselves. They are merely inputs.”

According to Samirul, wealth is created only when resources are governed competently, developed by skilled institutions and embedded within a long-term national strategy that is insulated from political volatility.

“This distinction matters because the world is full of countries that were rich in resources yet poor in outcomes,” he said. “Venezuela remains the most visible and instructive example.”

Despite possessing the largest proven oil reserves globally, Venezuela has failed to convert its geological advantage into durable economic strength. “The problem was never geology,” Samirul said. “It was governance.”

He said Venezuela’s experience reflected a familiar pattern seen in many resource-dependent economies, where politicised resource management erodes institutional autonomy, drives talent flight and undermines fiscal discipline.

“Once credibility is lost, oil abundance becomes economic vulnerability,” he said.

Today, Venezuela produces under one million barrels of oil per day, less than a third of its output two decades ago. “That collapse underscores a critical point,” Samirul said. “Outcomes are determined by institutional failure, not by how much oil a country has underground.”

Samirul stressed that Venezuela’s experience should be understood as an economic and institutional failure rather than a political endorsement of any external actor. “This is not a defence of Trump’s actions,” he said.

Samirul said Venezuela’s oil sector has been paralysed by internal disputes, politicisation and the breakdown of professional governance. “As institutional authority weakened, production collapsed, contracts lost credibility and the industry ceased to function as a reliable national asset.”

“That loss of credibility, more than ideology, is what ultimately invites foreign intervention,” he said, adding that when a country can no longer manage its core economic institutions effectively, it risks losing control not only over its resources but also over its strategic autonomy.

By contrast, he said, Malaysia demonstrates the opposite proposition, that a country with relatively modest reserves can still extract outsized national value if its institutions are designed correctly.

“Malaysia’s experience shows that resources do not make a nation rich,” he said. “Institutions do.”

Petronas

At the centre of that experience is Petronas, which Samirul described as an institution deliberately structured to avoid the political and economic traps that have ensnared many national oil companies globally.

“The success of a national oil company depends less on ownership slogans and more on institutional design, discipline and credibility,” he said.

According to Samirul, Petronas was built around professional management insulated from day-to-day politics, commercial discipline rather than populist extraction, and sustained reinvestment in human capital and technology.

“None of this happened by accident,” he said. “It required political stability, policy continuity across administrations and a genuine team effort across the federation.”

He stressed that Malaysia’s oil and gas ecosystem was never the product of a single ministry, state or political cycle.

“Federal institutions, producing states, regulators, engineers, financiers and diplomats all operated within a shared framework of roles and responsibilities,” he said. “No single actor could have built or maintained this system alone.”

That cooperative structure, he said, was precisely what kept Malaysia away from the classic resource trap.

Samirul cautioned against misreading global energy geopolitics, particularly amid renewed international debate over energy security and resource leverage.

“Engaging with global energy narratives does not require endorsing any political leader or ideology,” he said. “It simply recognises that external forces exist and that countries must navigate them intelligently.”

Malaysia’s approach, he added, has historically been pragmatic rather than ideological.

“Ride the wave, but do not mistake it for the tide,” he said. “Energy geopolitics can create openings, but only countries with coherent institutions can convert those moments into lasting advantage.”

Without such coherence, he warned, countries risk becoming objects of competition rather than beneficiaries.

“This is where many resource-rich jurisdictions go wrong,” he said. “They assume that possession of subsurface wealth automatically confers strategic autonomy.”

According to Samirul, this assumption has repeatedly proven false. “This is not about denying rights or dismissing local capability,” he said. “It is a structural observation grounded in history.”

In federations especially, he said, resource-rich regions face risks when institutional coordination breaks down, including fragmented governance, weak bargaining power against global majors and vulnerability to geopolitical pressure disguised as investment.

“In federations, the most costly mistake is confusing ownership with autonomy,” he said. “Ownership determines entitlement. Autonomy requires scale, capital depth, technological capability, diplomatic leverage, regulatory credibility and security insulation.”

“These conditions are not easily replicated in isolation,” he added.

Where they are absent, Samirul warned, resource-rich territories risk becoming extractive spaces rather than strategic actors, a condition that has historically left economies exposed to external influence.

Malaysia avoided that fate, he said, not by centralising ownership for its own sake, but by pooling sovereignty and aligning interests.

“That arrangement gave every part of the federation a stronger negotiating hand than any part could plausibly have wielded on its own,” he said.

Samirul said Venezuela’s experience should be read as an economic warning, not a political slogan.

“The real lesson is simple,” he said. “Oil without governance invites exploitation. Autonomy without coordination invites fragmentation. Wealth without political stability attracts external leverage.”

“Malaysia’s strength was never that it had oil,” he added. “It was that it built a system strong enough to manage oil without being consumed by it.”